


Band AU - or: We Really Should Have Called the Band Something Other Than 'Foreigner Hell'

by pbandfluff



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Asexual Character, Bisexual Character, F/F, F/M, Multi, Polyamorous Character, Polyamory, Queer Character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-16
Updated: 2015-10-18
Packaged: 2018-04-26 16:50:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5012374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pbandfluff/pseuds/pbandfluff
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's a Band AU mostly because I'm Twisswald triad trash and because I had feelings when Twelve played guitar and Missy sang.<br/>No coherent plot to be found, just snippets and scenes as they occur to me.<br/>Will (hopefully) feature Cass, Lunn, Vastra, Jenny, Strax, Idris, the Rani, and Kate Stewart along with Twelve, Clara, Missy, Osgood, and Ali.<br/>Peek inside for more info on the au 'verse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. How Clara Oswald Stole Christmas - alternatively: I Spent Christmas Eve with Two Weegies and a Geordie and All I Got Was This Stupid T-Shirt

**Author's Note:**

> Hopefully there will be multiple chapters to this and I can explain things in-story, but the minimum rundown goes something like this:
> 
> Gallifrey=The Band, taken from Scottish Gaelic _'Gall ifrinn'_ which translates literally as 'foreigner hell' (Missy is to blame for all of that)  
>  The Doctor=John, guitarist and secondary singer, Clara=manager, Missy=lead singer, Ali=Missy's daughter Ailsa, drummer  
> UNIT=recording studio, Kate Stewart=record exec, Osgood=sound engineer for UNIT  
> Idris=sound engineer for the band, Lunn=sign interpreter for the band's shows, Cass=sound consultant to Idris for shows  
> Vastra, Jenny, & Strax=band bodyguards and occasional back-up band  
> The Rani=old friend of John and Missy, Ali's other parent, rival musical artist

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -For the sake of this first chapter, you need to know John, Missy, and Clara are in a committed triad with each other. John is ace and grey-aro, and falls heavily in the autism spectrum. Clara is bi, and Missy is queer. (Hopefully I'll get to address it later, but I didn't want to assign Missy any specific mental illness as she _is_ a direct interpretation of canon Missy and I didn't want to associate mass murder or amorality with something like psychosis or anti-social personality disorder. That being said, Missy is very much neurodivergent, not as a cause of her terrible actions, but as a general way in which her brain chemically functions.)  
>  -Ali and Osgood are at this point good friends, with an underlying attraction that hasn't been acted on.  
> -John and Missy are from Glasgow, and though she was born in Glasgow, Ali was raised Geordie.  
> -This scene is set at John's house in London that the band shares, thus why Ali calls it 'home' but she and Osgood are still able to visit Osgood's family.

“Merry Christmas, shitlords.”

Three brightly colored shapes shot in quick succession across the small space of the living room as Ali threw herself back onto her spot on the couch, her grin sharp as the presents hit their intended targets with a crinkle of wrapping paper. Missy and Clara spluttered from where they were lounging on the couch, Clara draped across John's lap and Missy draped across her front until Ali's presents smacked them, literally, in the face.

John nimbly plucked the presents up and gave them a once-over, dextrous fingers rolling the packages as though he were contact juggling.

“These are yours,” he pronounced gruffly, depositing two of the presents back onto Missy and Clara's faces with a muted grin and a glance in their direction. Clara made a noise of protest, winding her arm out from underneath Missy's grasp to wrench the present off her face with a glaring scowl.

“So courteous, the both of you,” she sniped as Missy casually pulled her own present out of the way and rose up on all fours to stretch luxuriously.

From the other couch, now settled next to Osgood, Ali shrugged with a crooked grin, eyes sharp with suppressed laughter. Next to her Osgood took another long, awkward drink from her glass of wine, trying not to watch as Missy plied Clara into a better mood with only half-whispered promises and Clara's own, now full, glass of wine.

Thankfully, Osgood noted, Clara took the proffered glass with only a tinge of annoyance and a lingering glance at Missy's entirely mischievous grin while Ali gestured at the present in John's hands.

“Open it up,” Ali pressed, her words distorting and slurring as she turned her face into Osgood's shoulder and stifled a yawn. “It'll be days before the three of us are in the same room again, and I want to see what you think.”

Osgood hummed in agreement, tilting her head thoughtfully as she crossed her legs. “It's a bit of a present itself that you're all together for Christmas, I suppose. Or Christmas Eve, at least.”

Ali yawned again, blinking tiredly as she leaned more heavily against Osgood. “It's a howfing geet miracle, more like,” she murmured emphatically, her voice slipping into a stronger Geordie accent without the energy required to cover it up. “Haven't had Christmas at home in ages.”

Osgood smiled delightedly at Ali's change of speech while John, Missy, and Clara all picked at their presents.

“I thought we said we weren't going to do presents,” Clara offered carefully, eying the gaudy wrapping paper of her present with more than a little trepidation. John grunted a small agreement to Clara's statement, but began picking at the tape sealing his present closed.

Ali shrugged, almost looking embarrassed as she picked up her bottle of beer from the coffee table. “It's your first Christmas, the three of you,” she said, taking a swig of her drink and avoiding Clara's gaze, “Figured – why not, you know?”

Clara stared at Ali, eyes narrowed, for a long moment before shaking her head slightly. “If it jumps out at me, I know where you live.”

Ali grinned impishly, leaning forward in her seat as John, Missy, and Clara all began to open their presents.

Missy was the first to retrieve her gift, tearing through the wrapping savagely and violently tugging the gift out of the paper wreckage.

She held her gift aloft for a moment as Clara and John occupied themselves with their own gifts, reading the words emblazoned across the front before cackling viciously.

“Oh, darling, I _love_ it!” she exclaimed, clasping what was now identifiable as a shirt to her chest and beaming maniacally at Ali from across the room.

Clara paused in her own gift-opening long enough to turn towards Missy, open-mouthed with a question, before becoming enshrouded in Missy's blouse as the older woman hastily tossed her own shirt aside to try on the new one.

“Missy!” Clara scolded, eyebrows drawn as she dragged the blouse off of her head. “How many times do I have to-”

Clara's words stuttered to a halt as she took in Missy's gift, and from the other couch Osgood cleared her throat in lieu of a laugh as Ali chuckled almost silently beside her.

“Oh my god,” Clara breathed out with a tinge of horror, mortified with each passing second she contemplated the gift Missy now sported. She quickly gave up her plan of taking her time and tore through her own gift, finding not one, but two shirts inside. Reading both of them, she whirled around to see what John had received and found him holding a shirt as well, blinking in confusion and surprise at its design.

Clara swung around to face Ali, who was now curled up into Osgood's side, holding fast to her arm as she wheezed with laughter. Hefting one of her gifts up, Clara leveled a murderous glare at Ali. “ _'I'm tiny and bi, stop and say hi'_?” she hissed, her voice pitching up with her anger.

Ali couldn't reply, except to point at Clara's face as laughter wracked her frame, making her hiccup occasionally.

“ _'I'm here, I'm queer, get me out of here'_ ,” John read carefully from his shirt, taking a long moment before making a face of grudging but casual acceptance and moving to slip the shirt on over his jacket.

“Don't,” Clara pre-empted Missy with a pointed finger, giving her a look that brooked no arguments.

“But _Cla-ra_ ,” Missy whined silkily, leaning towards Clara with an indulgent smile as her voice lingered on Clara's name.

There was no need for Missy to disobey Clara's order, the bright text emblazoned across the shirt's front was easily visible to everyone in the room:

_'If you have to ask my preference, I'm definitely not fucking you'_.

“I couldn't resist,” Ali managed between laughing fits, “it was worth it for the look on your face!”

Missy preened as she adjusted her shirt, flashing Ali a smile and a wink. “I'll wear it every day, poppet.”

Clara groaned at that prospect, dropping her head onto the back of the couch with a satisfying thud as Ali burst into laughter once more. Beside her, John patted her hand awkwardly and offered a small smile.

“Oh, come on, Clara,” Missy cooed, shifting to drape herself along Clara's side and stare at her entreatingly with wide, put-upon eyes, “Put on one of yours and let's have a picture.”

“Missy,” Clara groaned wearily, raising her head to argue before meeting Missy's gaze with her own and finding herself faced with a pleading, faux-innocent look in those ice-blue eyes.

Her resolve wavered for a long moment before she conceded what was destined to be defeat with a roll of her eyes. “Fine,” she sighed, lifting the shirt already in her hand and fitting her arms through, “But only one, and that's it.”

Missy clapped excitedly as Clara slipped the shirt over her head and John reached down to pick up his phone from the side table.

“Would you do the honors?” he asked Ali with a cheeky grin, wrapping an arm around Clara's shoulder as she hunkered down and pouted angrily in her seat.

Ali's face lit up with a smile and she quickly sprang from her seat to take the phone from his hand.

“On the count of three,” she announced, deftly sliding her fingers through the combination of movements to open the camera on the phone. “One – oh come on Clara, give us a smile. Two – don't look at me like that, you know you like the shirts. Thr-”

Ali didn't make it through 'three' before Missy had snagged Clara by the collar of her new shirt, dragging her into a heated lip-lock as John looked on in amusement. Ali snapped a few pictures in the fleeting moment before lowering the phone with a grin. Missy let go of Clara, sitting back in her seat and discreetly wiping the excess lipstick from her mouth as Clara swayed in place, frozen by the suddenness of the kiss.

“I think that'll do,” Ali smirked as she tossed John his phone, turning around and swiping her bottle of beer off the coffee table once more and draining what was left inside. Setting the now-empty bottle back on the table, she chanced a look at Osgood, who looked flabbergasted at the manic camaraderie that bounced between the four of them.

Ali stretched her arms out in a gesture around the room. “Welcome to the family,” she joked, smiling softly as Osgood blinked in muted shock that was quickly fading.

“I hope you know my family will not be near this interesting,” Osgood quipped pointedly, turning her attention to Ali.

Ali laughed in reply, offering a hand as Osgood stood from the couch, “I should hope not. One set of these loonies is about all I can take.”

John and Missy both squawked in protest at that, and Ali gestured rudely with a laugh.

“Let's blow this joint,” she cajoled with a smile, picking up Osgood's coat from the back of the couch and offering it to her, “Maybe the company'll be better even if the drinks aren't.”

“Are you heading to the Osgood's?” Clara asked distractedly, trying to take her extra shirt off while Missy tried to thwart her with wandering hands to keep it on.

As Osgood slipped on her coat, she recognized the look that came into Ali's eyes at Clara's question, and the wink she threw Osgood's way only reinforced Osgood's belief that something incredibly glib was going to come out of Ali's mouth in response.

“Na, we're gannin' on the hoy for the neet, get propa mortal, like,” Ali drawled in full Geordie, grinning wickedly at Osgood as Clara huffed out a breath in annoyance. “Aye, pet?”

Osgood fumbled with continuing the joke, but managed to eke out an 'Aye' as Clara took a large gulp of her momentarily-forgotten class of wine. John and Missy chuckled at Clara's frustration with the Geordie slang, and John winked at Ali before replying.

“Dinnae get yersel mad wi' it, lassie,” he burred, his brogue thicker than Osgood had ever heard even in casual settings, “Clara'll skelp ye if yer whitey the morra.”

Ali nodded with a wide grin even as Clara poured herself another glass of wine. “Aye, nee need to get wrang off her owa the neet. Aa'll see ye i' the morn. Gan canny, man.”

“See ye efter,” John replied with a nod, raising an eyebrow as Clara narrowed her eyes at him.

“Goodneet, Missy,” Ali threw over her shoulder with a wave, settling her hand on Osgood's waist to lead her towards the front of the house.

“Hae a guid nicht,” Missy sing-songed as Ali and Osgood disappeared into the foyer, and Clara threw her hands up in the air in defeat.

“Just go ahead,” she conceded with a dramatic sigh, “go ahead and butcher the English language, I don't even care.”

John and Missy glanced at each other for a moment, silently coming to a decision with a quirk of each of their mouths.

“Ah, but Clara,” Missy purred, stalking forward slowly on her hands and knees to lean into Clara’s personal space, forcing Clara back against John until Missy could pin her in with an arm on either side, “that's where you're missing the point.”

Clara glared up in defiance as Missy hovered over her with a sharp, focused grin, her hands moving out of sheer habit to slip under the edge of Missy’s shirt and stroke the soft, heated skin at Missy’s waist. A gentle hand along her throat made her jump, but she relaxed as John shifted behind her and bent to press a kiss to the junction of her neck and shoulder. His fingers slowly stroked delicate patterns across the sensitive skin of her throat, as though he were writing a message, and Clara sighed as she arched her neck in offering.

“It's a dialect, Clara,” John hummed lowly against her skin, nosing his way under her hair to press another lingering kiss to her neck, “A language that stands on its own, if you're willing to learn.”

Clara laughed breathlessly and arched into John's touch as she stared at Missy, who stared right back with eyes sparking with desire. “You think you can teach me?”

Missy's mouth slowly curved into a deliciously wicked grin, her bright red lips an inviting slash across her fair face. “Oh, Clara,” she breathed impishly, glancing expectantly up at John before focusing her wanting gaze back on her prey. “There's _so much_ you have yet to learn.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My apologies to any Geordies or Weegies reading this, I am but a humble Texan with a Geordie friend who inspired me to try and write a Geordie character. Any inaccuracies in slang are my own.
> 
> For those of you who don't know Geordie slang or Glaswegian patter, the conversation was _supposed_ to go as such:  
>  Clara: "Are you heading to the Osgood's?"  
> Ali: [sarcastically] "No, we're going out to drink all night and get absolutely smashed. Right, mate?"  
> Osgood: "Uh... sure."  
> John: "Don't get too drunk, Clara will slap you silly if you're sick with a hangover tomorrow."  
> Ali: "Yeah, no need to make her angry over a night out. I'll see you tomorrow; take it easy."  
> John: "See you later."  
> Ali: "Night, Missy."  
> Missy: "Have a good night."


	2. Mam, Look! I'm in a Magazine! - alternatively: Clara Made Us Do P.R. Under Pain of Death or Lost Snuggle Privileges

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is different from most of the things I write, but I thought given the nature of the AU, it would make sense to "reveal" some of the backstory this way instead of having one character monologue or try to rattle off the band's history in one go. There's some facts conveniently omitted for purposes of being true to what the characters would say when questioned; that'll come out in a later scene. And this interview will probably be referenced at some point. The threat that coerced this interview into being certainly will be (note: see title of chapter).

**Gallifrey: The Band that Time Forgot**

_By Harriet Jones_

 

Breakout underground rock band Gallifrey has managed to make waves on both the rock and pop music scene, combining ethereal vocals with solid, energetic percussion and impressive riffs. Managing to steadily climb in the charts, Gallifrey is the long-time band no one saw coming. I had the opportunity to sit down with all three members for an informal lunch and interview.

**Why don’t you introduce yourselves?**

> John: John Smith, guitarist extraordinaire.
> 
> _[John, the founding member of the band, is an older man who carries his age well. Standing long-limbed and lean at six feet tall, his outfit of a suit jacket and hoodie along with black trousers and well-worn Doc Martens lends him a casual elegance that is reminiscent of David Bowie in the 80’s.]_
> 
> Missy: Missy Black, Weegie Two to John’s Weegie One.
> 
> _[Missy, the band’s lead singer, is a startling beautiful woman, petite in frame with sharp features and piercing ice-blue eyes that captivate instantly. Her mouth is almost always quirked up into a secretive smile, and occasionally she laughs to herself as though privy to some joke only she can hear.]_
> 
> Ali: Ailsa Burns, but please call me Ali.
> 
> _[Ali, the band’s drummer, is the youngest member by 20 or so years. Of the three seated, she is the one that most looks the part of a contemporary rocker, with 3 visible piercings and half of her nearly waist-long hair shaved close to her scalp. She notices my examination of her leather jacket and laughs.]_
> 
> Ali: Don’t let the look fool you. [she opens her jacket to reveal a ‘My Neighbor Totoro’ t-shirt] I’m just a geek in a rock band.

**Is that what you would call Gallifrey - a rock band?**  

> Ali: [shrugging] It’s the label that people seem to like the most. I mean, we’ve been called a lot of things - punk-pop, indie, heavy metal, glam rock, alternative - hell, we even count as folk metal. But it’s- it’s more of a label we use for records, for organizational reasons. We just make music that we like and I guess that’s rock music. 

**Let me backtrack a bit. Explain what “Gallifrey” is.**

> John: Gallifrey is something Missy and I came up with from Scottish Gaelic. It’s a bastardization of the words _‘Gall ifrinn’_ sort of slurred together to get Gallifrey. It means something like- what was it-
> 
> Missy: 'Foreigner hell'. [here she shrugs with a gleeful smile] I wasn't too keen on England at the time.

**So the both of you are from Scotland?**

> Ali: We were all born in Glasgow, but I grew up in Newcastle.
> 
> Missy: [sighing] Good Weegie lass, and she went and grew up Geordie.

**How long have you known each other if you’re all originally from Glasgow?**

> John: Missy and I have known each other since we were kids. Ali came along a bit after that.
> 
> Ali: We all lost touch years ago, though. I mean, we’d see each other now and then, but… I guess we’ve only really all known each other well the years the band’s been together. 

**How did the band get together?**

> John: Well, Missy and I started playing gigs around the same time-
> 
> Missy: Ages ago, back in the 80’s I guess.
> 
> John: We were doing our own thing, though, trying to make it solo. Never thought of making a band.
> 
> Missy: [laughing] We would’ve killed each other if we’d done gigs together, darling. Nearly killed each other as it was.
> 
> John: It was a rough time in Glasgow so we went to Newcastle. Didn’t have any luck there, so I kept heading south. Missy-
> 
> Missy: I took some time off, had some adventures, got back into singing. Needed a change of scenery.
> 
> John: Gigging was routine for years for me. Lived like a busker, here for a night, there for another, made enough money to get to the next gig. Had a couple of people I played with for a couple of months at a time. Had Sarah Jane- Sarah Jane Smith, good friend, met her on the road one time, she wrote this write-up of a gig I did for a local mag that managed to get some attention from UNIT, who’s now our recording studio. I signed on with them but it was still a struggle. Kept doing the tour circuit until- well, until you-
> 
> Missy: It was a friend-of-a-friend kind of situation. I sent John’s name up the ladder because I knew he was in need of a manager, and word on the street was Clara needed someone to manage.
> 
> John: Clara suggested trying the band route, and the only person I thought of still in the business was Missy.
> 
> Missy: Best choice he ever made.
> 
> John: It was easy after that to realize we needed a third and since we both knew Ali-
> 
> Ali: Yeah, I was coming off busking as well. Didn’t have a place to live at the time so I thought why not, it was at least a place to sleep and it’s been… pretty much history since then.

**You have a couple of other people “in the band” now, right?**

> Ali: Yeah, we- well, John, really, came with a sound engineer when the band started. Her name’s Idris and she’s the one that really works the magic with the music. I mean, we play but she makes it all sound good.
> 
> John: Idris was one of the people I met right when I sort of went off to do my own thing. She helped me fix my amp at a gig one night and she hasn’t left since, really. Just one of those things I learned not to question.
> 
> Ali: Idris is the one that suggested some of the other people who work with the band, actually. She said we needed a sign interpreter for our shows - which, we did - and then when Lunn came on board and she met his girlfriend Cass, Idris was the one that insisted we hire Cass to help with sound at concerts.

**How did the band’s look develop? You’re fairly well-known for your fashion sense on stage.**

> _[John and Ali shift in their seats at my question and give each other a long-suffering look]_
> 
> John: That’s all Missy’s doing.
> 
> Missy: And you’ve never looked better, now hush. To answer your question, I had the thought of ‘What would Mary Poppins wear to a heavy metal concert?’ and went from there. As for John, Clara and I made him pick out everything he felt comfortable wearing and put together his concert outfits from that selection.
> 
> Ali: I didn’t need fashion supervision.
> 
> _[John glares at Ali, but says nothing]_  

**The camaraderie between the three of you is very obvious, just from listening to you talk. Was it like that from the very beginning?**

> Ali: It took a while getting used to things like tour buses and hotel rooms, but we’ve always managed to make do, even if we want to kill each other sometimes.
> 
> John: She means we had to get used to Missy singing at all hours of the day.
> 
> Ali: I was more talking about her lack of clothing on the tour bus, but I’d forgotten about that one.
> 
> _[Missy shrugs at Ali’s words, unapologetic]_

**Wow. That’s… You really do that?**

> Missy: You should try it sometime.

**Probably not any time soon. But it does let me ask you about touring. You’ve said before that you do a lot of your recording while on tour.**

> John: Part of that is avoiding stagnation. None of us are really cut out for months spent in the same room writing music. Part of it is making the music when we get it.
> 
> Ali: We have a good handful of songs that are in Scottish Gaelic or Gaulish or other sort of lost or forgotten languages and we spend a lot of time on the road talking to people who know the old folk stories, who can still speak the languages, or give us pointers.
> 
> Missy: None of us have an eidetic memory, me especially, so we write what we have when we have it. Believe me, if I had to wait a year to record some of these songs I would’ve forgotten them by then.
> 
> John: Idris also has a “recording studio on wheels”, basically. So she can record us and mix the tracks no matter where we’re at.

**Do you have anything in the works right now, something that will be released soon?**

> Ali: We’ve got a couple of ideas and a few songs in the rough stages but nothing to be released soon.
> 
> Missy: You have that thing you’re doing-
> 
> Ali: Oh yeah, I’m teaming up with some of the people at UNIT to do a feature on sound design. I can’t say more than that, but it’ll be a good look into what goes into the recording process.
> 
> John: We also have some special shows we’re doing, meeting up with some other artists so hopefully there’s a few songs that come out of that.

**Thank you so much for coming in, it’s been a treat to get to sit down and talk with you.**  

> Ali: Thanks for having us.
> 
> John: Yes, thank you.
> 
> Missy: Toodles!


End file.
